WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 305 



if, after many years of successful navigation, he should, 

 after the manner of men, make one mistake. 



But it may be said, " Why begin an article on what 

 the sea means to us with a diatribe like this? " I cry 

 you mercy ; my only excuse is that, in season and out 

 of season, I feel called upon to denounce the utterly 

 unmerited neglect meted out to the men of the 

 Merchant Service, and consequently zeal often outruns 

 judgment. Enough ! let us to the subject imme- 

 diately in hand. In other portions of this book, I 

 have glanced rapidly at the conditions which made 

 this little group of islands in the North Atlantic heir 

 of all the nautical mercantile traditions of the civilized 

 world. But, in considering what the sea now means 

 to us, it will be well to remember that, before ever we 

 had entertained an idea of founding a great oversea 

 trade, the Italians especially had built up powerful 

 republics upon this foundation. With a whole con- 

 tinent at their backs full of incalculable riches, the 

 great men of Pisa, Leghorn, Genoa, and Venice 

 deliberately chose the sea as their road to wealth, and 

 worthily they pursued it, doughtily they fought for 

 its maintenance. It was not until they, by reason of 

 quarrels with one another, warring factions at home, 

 and restricted area for their operations, began to 

 dwindle, and the English, lineal descendants of the 

 ancient Vikings, and with distinct traces of an elder 

 ancestry that of the trading Phoenicians began to 

 push forward into remote parts of the world in strenuous 

 competition with the Latins, and discovered that, in 

 all things appertaining to seafaring, the English were 

 the superiors of the Latin. It was a momentous dis- 

 covery, and it fired the blood of Englishmen generally 



x 



